Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is an odd mixture. From mayhem specialist Bekmambetov, I was expecting a silly but fun action drama set during Lincoln's youth. What I didn't expect was this decades-spanning effort which makes the odd decision to blend silly supernatural hijinks with serious historical fact - like crossing 'Buffy' with a historical biopic.While it adds a distinct flavour of the unusual and gives the film some individuality, it also slows things down and grants it an odd, occasionally inappropriate feeling of mocking deadly serious historical events.However, as the lead Benjamin Walker is capable, if a little bland. Dominic Cooper outshines him for charisma by a New York mile, and Rufus Sewell is deliciously evil as his vampiric nemesis.The action is frequent, although oddly unimpressive in several scenes. However, the initial confrontation with a vampire, a visually extraordinary horseback pursuit, and an early face-off between the arch enemies are extremely impressive. While not as flat as similarly toned historical supernatural actioner 'Jonah Hex', and no classic, this is still a fun, and occasionally very cleverly written and entertaining film. Worth a watch.

I stumbled upon this film thinking it was Spielberg's Lincoln. Thankfully it was not. This film has greater emotive depth and tense action sequences than (I am told) Spielberg's Lincoln has.

I would say that this film is generally very realistic. The only place where it deviates a little from believability is when one of the vampires throws a horse at Abraham Lincoln. While I do not question the strength of the horse-throwing vampire, the physics of horse flight is probably not accurately portrayed.

I think the film will appeal to those who are not very pedantic and are willing to overlook slight inaccuracies in the trajectory of a horse that has just been thrown by a vampire.

I have just watched this film. I thoroughly enjoyed it, it is very entertaining and full of action, from start to finish. OK, so it may not be very historically accurate and some liberties are taken with that, but the constant action more than compensates for that. It is reasonably violent and very gory, so young children should not be allowed to watch this film. The acting was generally very good and it flowed very well and did not drag at all. A lot of the action is produced with the help of a lot of CGI, but it was done very well and did not really look fake at all. I did not manage to see this film at the cinema, which I regret, but I am glad that I caught it on DVD. Four stars from me!

Firstly I don't care if this film is historically accurate...anyone who goes to see a film with 'Vampire Hunter' in the title expecting historical accuracy is an idiot in my opinion.This is a great, absorbing, action-horror with some very clever interweaving of established historical facts. I found the entire film to be excellent entertainment from start to finish. I watched the 3D blu-ray and I can say that I was very impressed with the 3D - there's very little in the way of ghosting and the amount of depth perception is impressive. Thankfully, the director never goes for the 'Oooh, that's 3D' shot of things awkwardly being thrust towards the screen; instead favouring the technique of staging shots with a lot of fore, middle and background detail - although I will say that the burning embers during the train sequence really did seem to 'come out of the screen'.All performances are strong, but of special note is Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who manages to make Mary Todd Lincoln a very sympathetic and rounded character despite her limited screen time - most notably during her breakdown when she slaps at Lincoln.The vampires are, thankfully, of the horrific scary variety rather than the beautiful, glittery type and this film benefits greatly for that. Masses of teeth and bad skin are the norm for these vamps and I found them a joy to watch.Having watched the film twice in as many days I can honestly say it's a really great piece of escapism and one to watch many time over. Is it going to tax your brain? Probably not; but it should entertain thoroughly!

Those bemoaning the death of films aimed at grownups were curiously silent over the fact that of 2012’s two films about Abraham Lincoln, it was the one about the political horse trading and infighting over the Thirteenth Amendment that excited audiences and pulled in the big bucks while the special effects-fuelled high concept supernatural action movie Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter crashed and burned. It’s one of the less surprising would-be blockbuster flops of recent years, though, taking an anarchic premise – that the Father of the Nation waged a lifelong acrobatic axe-wielding war against the living dead who used the southern slave trade as a cheap food supply – and treating it in such a po-faced fashion that there wasn’t nearly as much fun as the title promised, with moments like Rufus Sewell’s vampire master kicking Lincoln in the nuts few and far between.

What the film does offer is a surprising amount of spectacle, with Gettysburg being fought with Confederate vampires, and plenty of action, be it Honest Abe jumping from horse to horse in a stampeding herd in pursuit of the vampire who killed his mother or a rip-roaring climax aboard a runaway train besieged by the undead on a burning bridge. There’s some imagination in the despatching of its revenants and its reimagination of the causes of the Civil War, with director Timur Bemambetov getting an awful long of bang for his surprisingly modest buck while having fun with outlandish swooping camera moves and Benjamin Walker more convincing as the older president than the earnest young law student with a grudge and a silver-plated axe (Walker bearing an uncanny resemblance to a young Liam Neeson, who was originally lined up to star in Spielberg’s film), but it remains an okay timefiller rather than a future cult classic.